As the party chewed their way through the Black Skeletons, the Nalfeshnee summoned a second of it’s kind before dying, but the second one didn’t fare any better than the first. Elerra managed to knock Losien out of the fight with her drow poisoned crossbow bolts, lessening the threat from end of the room.

Once the demons and the skeletons had fallen, the Meroln and Alexia made quick work of the necromancers, leaving the others to loot the bodies of the fallen and truss up Losien. Their mission complete, the Teleported back to Narwell and had the Baron lock Losien up in one of the anti-magic cells, while the party identified and split up their swag.

The following day they paid Losien a visit in his cell, where he alternately cursed them for “ruining the plan” and demanded to be taken to see Mordenkainen. Over the course of his “interrogation”, he revealed that he had been Mordenkainen’s agent for the past three years, secretly working behind the scenes against Iuz,the Path, and the Black Rooks while keeping Mordenkainen in the loop on their machinations.

As the party could neither catch him in a lie nor refute any of the points of his story, they slowly began to believe that maybe he might be telling the truth. For his part, he steadfastly refused to impart his information to anyone but Mordenkainen.

Unfortunately, nobody had heard anything from Mordenkainen or the other members of the Circle of Eight since the Scourge of the Archmages back on the 22nd of Patchwall. Alexia, gambling that Murlynd, because of his close connection to the world, might be able to guide her, cast a Divination (and spent a Hero Point) to receive a vision of the place where at the very least, Tenser had gone to hide.

Her vision showed Tenser during the Scourge, fleeing his tower with the Esoterica in hand, arriving in what looked to be a supremely unkempt and downtrodden part of some city or town. He then entered an establishment whose sign featured a unicorn pleasuring itself, spoke a word to the bartender, then entered a private booth and opened a panel leading to a bolt hole down into the sewers. Sometime later, after navigating the twists and turns of the fetid tunnel, he knocked on a section of wall which opened to reveal a clean, brightly lit chamber containing Mordenkainen, Warnes Starcoat, and Rary. Tenser seemed a bit off-put by Rary’s presence, but entered the chamber nonetheless, ending the vision.

Relating the vision to her companions, Squizzles tentatively identified the bar Tenser had entered as the Vulgar Unicorn, a notorious establishment in the city of Sanctuary, rumored to be a backwater port in the Rankan Empire somewhere on Luna, the nearer of Liga’s two moons. The following day the group Teleported to Greyhawk and sought a spelljammer captain who would be willing to transport them to Luna and hence to Sanctuary. The group grudgingly released Losien and returned his equipment to him, though they kept a close eye on him.

After being laughed at by several captains, they finally found one willing to take them there, though he charged them through the nose for the privilege. Finally settling into the comparatively tiny port, Wilfred endeavored to Teleport everyone into the sewers that Alexia had described, but somehow left Sam and Elerra behind. Elerra attempted to use her own Teleport to rejoin the rest, but landed Sam and herself in another part of the sewer, and the group wasted several minutes reuniting. Eventually they located the patch of stone Tenser had opened to reveal Mordenkainen’s Bastion, only to discover that they didn’t know how to open it.

Sam attempted to pick the lock, narrowly avoiding a poison needle but setting off an explosion that damaged several party members. Opening the chamber revealed Tenser and Mordenkainen rushing to see what had happened, and they then greeted the party and Losien. Soon thereafter, Losien went off alone with Tenser and Mordenkainen to give his report.

While the party cooled their heels in the outer chambers, they noticed a display case with the Crystal Frogs (except for the last of the set, which had been destroyed). Not very long after that, the group detected the sounds of combat coming from the direction Tenser, Losien and Mordenkainen had gone off in, and the group arrived in time to see Tenser slumped to the floor at one end of the room while Losien, the Esoterica in hand, was slowly fading to nothingness over Mordenkainen’s body.

Elerra quickly leapt at Losien and keyed her Cube of Force to it’s “block everything” setting, causing Losien to cease his vanishing. Losien responded by smiling evilly, casting a quickened Truesight, and launching into a devastating attack on Elerra. She followed up by dropping the Cube and using a Heal on herself, and then once more fired her hand crossbow at Losien, putting him to sleep once more. Wilfred targeted Losien with a Dimensional Anchor, as Alexia rushed over to kick the Esoterica aside, Sam moved in to deliver a coup de grace, only to find himself and Losien’s slumbering body both now doing the slow fade to nothingness.

As we broke for the evening, the party was catching their collective breath and wondering what to do about Sam’s strange disappearance, while Sam found himself reunited with Click-clack, his erstwhile " father-figure " from his youth…